Andy Coulson, Wikileaks And Waiting For A Guardian Story

ANDY Coulson remains front-page news on the Independent, but the Guardian has dropped the story. No other national leads with the news of David Cameron’s communications master.

The essence of the tale is interesting – did top media man in Government know about illegal goings on while he was editor of the country’s biggest selling tabloid?

And here are the facts:

The NoTW royal editor gets jailed for hacking into voicemails of important knobs and people how might call them; lots of Labour MPs demand to know if they were on the list of people with potentially interesting private lives; The Guardian, BBC and Indy lead with the story day on day; everyone reads about Wayne Rooney’s sex life; and elements on the Left call for tougher sanctions, punishment and tighter rules that will undermine freedom.

The Guardian has helped to create a climate in which everyone from leading bobbies to opportunistic MPs can vent their spleen against the cocky tabloids, and by extension against the idea of press freedom itself. Is there no one at the Guardian who is willing to say at their morning editorial conference: “Guys, I think we’ve gone too far”?

The treatment of the story is something other than entertaining. It is dull.

The story is going nowhere. Tom Watson, the Labour MP on the Commons culture select committee, is quoted in the Guardian. Desperate to prove some kind of point, he recalls another old story form 2003 that…

…placed Murdoch in the line of fire by accusing him of appointing [Rebekah] Brooks as chief executive of News International knowing that she had admitted that illegal payments had been made to police.

The News of the World had paid police officers in the past for stories? What police working with the media? Who would ever believe it!? Next the Guardian will be telling us that elements within the US military are passing secrets to the Guardian via Wikileaks for exposure and fame (surely to shine a light on the truth about the war in Afghanistan? – ed).

Coulson is not saying much, having already said that he was innocent. There is no new evidence to prove he knew NoTW hacks were intercepting voicemail messages. Sticking to the facts, the story is at a dead end.

Still, if you cock and ear to the Guardian and the BBC you can hear the sound of chatter about not very much at all.

But if someone can find a fact – peharps one buried in a locked draw, on a voicemail, say, or in a sexed-up dogy dossier an alternative truth could out. Over to the Guardian…